The directors of the five World Marathon Majors - one cannot resist thinking of them as the "heads of the Five Families" - confabbed in a teleconference on Tuesday. The five are Carey Pinkowski of the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, Dave Bedford of the Flora London Marathon, Guy Morse of the Boston Marathon, Mark Milde of the real Berlin Marathon, and Mary Wittenberg of the ING New York City Marathon. Pinkowski and Bedford made opening statements.

Carey Pinkowski, Chicago: "There's some excitement building around the Series, as you're all aware, as we prepare and move towards Berlin on September 24 and then Chicago on October 22. As you've seen, we have some of our marquee athletes, some of the greatest distance and marathon runners in the world, that have already been announced - obviously in Berlin, Mr. (Haile) Gebrselassie and Miss (Mizuki) Noguchi, Paul Tergat and Deena Kastor in New York, Felix Limo in Chicago - which obviously illustrates the marquee athletes are continuing in our events .... We're been continuing to work together on several issues on the forefront. Behind the scenes, I think our efforts and our partnerships have been very, very successful and things are coming on the horizon. I think we'll add to the sport, we'll be good for all of these events, and I'm excited to continue this relationships and partnership."

Dave Bedford, London: "This year is a slightly unusual year in the cycle of World Marathon Majors in that three years out of four, we have a World Championships or Olympic Games that forms part of our scoring structure. We felt that this being the odd year out, it was probably useful to just touch base with people, almost as a bridge between the spring and autumn events....

"We made an announcement three months ago that the World Marathon Majors had committed themselves to a very strong position on athletes who were found positive for an offense (for drugs) that had more than a three-month penalty. Any athlete so affected would never be invited back to our events as elite athletes. We have continued to develop that stance and have been working very strongly on joint contracts, where each of the contracts that each of our marathons has with elite athletes has all the basic common principles in it. In other words, an athlete competing in Chicago or New York will have the same responsibilities as if they were in London or Berlin. And we have already started working in our own ways on drafts of those. More importantly, within that, there are a number of elements that you would probably call a code of conduct, which talks very much about what the events except from athletes. Obviously, athletes want to know what they can expect from events the other way, and I think we are now identifying that a code of conduct for athletes is very, very important.

"And as we've gone through this summer and, like the rest of the sport, (we've been) I suppose 'shocked to the core' is not an over-exaggeration, on the impact in athletics of the Justin Gatlin announcement, in cycling the Tour de France announcement, and, of course, pending confirmation, the very real situation, real possibility, that Marion Jones ...looks likely to be it. That has caused us, as a group, to strengthen our resolve. We have, as a group, the World Marathon Majors, written to the IAAF, and copied our own federations, our own chief executives, and members from our own countries who sit on IAAF Council, remembering them of the cstance that World Marathon Majors has taken on doping and urging the IAAF to take significantly stronger action as we go forward.... Marathon running has also been fortunate, perhaps, or maybe it's because of the resolve of individual members, not to have had such shocking announcements. We believe, however, that to sit there and to say that this does not impact on our sport would be na?..... The time to believe that education is the way forward with athletes with drugs abuse has gone, and the only thing that has a chance of having a significant impact on our sport is a significantly higher level of penalties and we believe we have certainly shown the way there....

"We continue to be a group of the best marathons in the world, united in the belief that we are the best marathons, united in the belief that we have to continue to strive for perfection in our sport."

Runner's World Daily: You have successful well-established marathons with their own traditions. But as time goes on and professionalism and growth and other things happen, how do you struggle to have to alter those traditions? Specifically, with the Boston Marathon, a decision was made to abandon a noon time and alter the start (to 10 a.m.). How much resistance did you get on that, and what ultimately made you decide it was a step you had to take?

Guy Morse, Boston: "Tradition is very important, but also, progress is important. And to be honest with you, to date, we have not received a lot of hesitation or pushback on the earlier start. I think there's a common goal and a common agreement that an earlier start is better for the runners, especially on a warm day, which has been recently the case at several Bostons. And also, like a lot of other traditions, they're traditions for a reason, but there's also reason to change - witness the one point in time where women weren't allowed to compete in Boston or elsewhere. That was a change that was overdue. We believe the start change is a change that is overdue, both from the runners' point of view, which goes to the medical concerns of the runners, and also from the communites' point of view in our particular case. As you know, it's on a Monday in Boston, a quasi-holiday on Patriots' Day, and traffic issues became paramount over the years.... It became clear that this change was ready to be made and we've received virtually no resistance to it from the communities and in fact, most runners are embracing it as a refreshing change for Boston to keep us in the forefront of marathoning."

RWS:: Why did three of the races (in the World Marathon Majors) withdraw from AIMS (Association of International Marathons and Road Races)? What was the background and motivation for that and what do you hope to achieve thorugh that?

Dave Bedford, London: "One of my colleagues, Nick Bitel, was aboard members of AIMS for more than a period of two years. He was concerned over issues of governance, over issues of the role that AIMS was actually having in the world of marathon running. The board did not wish to make significant changes or indeed any changes, significant or otherwise, and we in London felt that in those circumstances, that although we were a founder member, that it was not appropriate for us to belong to an organization that had a constitution and ignored it and worse. We thought in that situation it was appropriate for us to leave.... There comes a point sometimes where if you can't resolve a matter politically, and you are really concerned about what's happening at the core, that the only thing you can do is to leave, and that's what we did."

Mary Wittenberg, New York City: "This is a very important time for our sport. We see this as the moment to elevate it, and our tolerance for anything but excellence is no longer there, and we're staring issues in the face like the drug issue. This is yet another situation where - Dave said it right - it would have easier to sit back. But the right thing is to stand behind our iniatives and try to make the sport better. Our hope is that what comes out of this is actually a much more unified sport on a world level."

Carey Pinkowski: "I think we were the second event to resign from AIMS. It was just some issues that were brought to our attention from London's Chief Executive, Nick Bitel. There was a window when those were to be addressed. They weren't addressed, and we decided in support that we would withdraw from AIMS."

RWS: We've seen very vibrant races in Boston and New York, where times doesn't really matter. The races where times does matter (the flat Berlin, London, and Chicago courses) have seemed to follow the pattern of track races, where we have 30 kilometers with pacers. The competition hasn't been as great as in Boston, where there have been no pacers. Have their been discussions on focusing the races on competition than as races against time?

Dave Bedford, London: "There has been some discussion, and I think that most of the events understand the point. I think that if you look, for example, of the record of London races over the last ten years where my job is to put a field together that becomes competitive, it's worked far more times than it hasn't. The one area that all of us are nervous about is the move that we took in London to have men pacemakers in women's events, and that is certainly something that we have been discussing, and the pace-making issue generally. It seems to us, the general basis, that providing pacemakers don't get deeply and over-involved, that a fast race will by and large produce a more honest overall performance and result than perhaps a slow 1500-meter race, for example, where you do through three laps in 3:30. At the end of the day, although we are a group of five marathons, each of us have our own markets that we have to satisfy. The history of athletics is absolutely linked with the comparison of one generation to another through time. Without timings in the way that perhaps horseracing runs in this country, I believe we would be a very, very different sport. For us, we have a fast course, we have strong fields, and there is the opportunity from time to time to have a world record. As a former world record holder myself (for 10,000 meters), I certainly think there is a place in our sport for fast times and world records but not at the cost of competition disappearing."

RWD:: Have the fall races begun to see some athletes making their race choices guided perhaps by their position in the World Marathon Majors rankings?

Mary Wittenberg, New York City: "Yes, we've definitely seen that. When you look at the list of the current men and women on the leader board, we see the vast majority in our races this fall. A good example is probably Stefano Baldini (the 2004 Olympic gold medalist). Stefano ran very well in London, ran a national record, then was committed for his country of Italy to run European Championships (earlier this month). He won that in a strategic but challenging marathon. He immediately came out and said he'd like to run again in the fall. New York's a natural because it gives him the most amount of time of recover, and he's going to do everything he can to run. He'll make that decision in the next week or two, but if it weren't for the Marathon Majors, this would be the year he would not run this fall. If you run through the list, I know that Carey, Mark, and I have heard from each of these athletes and they want to be in the mix, as well as others like Haile (Gebrselassie) and Paul Tergat, who are just dying to stake a place on the leader board."

Carey Pinkowski, Chicago: "I definitely think there's an added incentive when you're approaching athletes that you're interested in recruiting. The Series is an added value piece that helps in the process."

: Can you say anything more specific, beyond the drug issue, about what the contractual code of conduct would include?

Dave Bedford, London: "It's really fairly basic stuff. We are trying to make sure that when an athlete comes to our events, that where is a common set of conditions that we as races are prepared to say we will deliver. There's a common set of responsibilities that we, the events, believe that we should have. In other words, athletes who in past from time to time don't bother to show at press conferences or turn up late or (for whom) we have difficulty in getting up to date information about a whole load of factors. This is about us committing to the athletes and getting the athletes, and of course, their agents, who are key movers in this as well, accepting that we all have a responsibility fior our sport, that this is OUR sport, that it's not just that we put on the events and they have the athletes. From the great support we've had so far from all of the athletes' agents in the development of World Marathon Majors, we will start to see significant changes as we go forward.... People in the sport will naturally understand that the game has changed."

Mary Wittenberg, New York City: "Philosophically, what the whole code of conduct is set on is doing what we can to promote the sport with great integrity. So a number of provisions relate to the media side and the fan side .... We're talking about sportsmanlike conduct. We're talking about punctuality...attendance at awards ceremonies, which helps in developing the fan base. No wagers, no bribes. All the classic things you would expect in a code of conduct that aims to have a sport of integrity and one that we can promote around the world as we're seeking to do."